


the artifact

by riverbed



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Death, F/M, Resurrection, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:44:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6738661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbed/pseuds/riverbed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this isn't a ghost story.</p><p>it's just life, again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the artifact

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9XfFGIwXT8). it's a very visual narrative of its own, and listening to it before reading this will probably kind of help you follow it.

Breathing again after so long is strange. What Alexander notes most proudly is that he hasn’t forgotten how. In, out. His lungs fill and it feels so good, so right. He’s been deprived of breath for so long, watching himself lie perfectly still through eight feet of rotting soil.

It turns out that in the afterlife you don’t need to breathe. And Alexander had missed it, he realizes now, inhaling deeply. The air is different, tang of oil. He tastes it greedily.

She’s looking at him, eyes sparkling. She looks terrified but is hiding it well. Alexander knows the ways people look when they are terrified, whether they are strong in the face of their fears or not - but he can tell she is one of the strongest. His heart threatens to stop again at the thought of being the cause for her fear.

But she reaches out toward him, tentative, lays a hand over the muscle rattling in his chest. It’s an unfamiliar sensation, pounding rough when she touches him. She’s warm, body heat Alexander hasn’t yet regained transferring into his core. He shivers upon realizing how cold he is. He wants to reach out, wrap around her and absorb her heat. He doesn’t. He lies very still, blinking to adjust to the light. It’s early morning and though fog rolls heavy above sun shines through it. It’s brighter than he could ever imagine. Everything tends to be hazy through the veil.

She’s staring at him like it’s a test. Eyes focused on his face. Her hand moves slowly down his torso, to the wound in his side - he flinches before he realizes he can move, bones creaking. She draws back her tiny hand very slightly but there is no pain, only dull pressure. The heel of her hand lays on his flank, against the bandage. They’d buried him with it. They’d buried him in his uniform, with ribbon in his hair. The indigo is as rich as it ever was. His epaulettes, gold foil, lay beside him with a packet of personal effects, a miniature of Philip, his watch, being a gift from General Washington. He knows the contents of the pouch, has visited himself regularly over the past two hundred years to dig through and feel the heft of the gold in his hand, though weight means little anymore. It is a strange sensation, being able to know a thing in minute detail without needing to measure it physically the way he once did. He thinks he will not ever be able to describe it. He hopes he is not ever asked to.

Her hair is long and straight, shining black. Her eyes are piercing. She smiles at him.

*

The city goes by faster than he is used to. He tries to watch out the window, but buildings whiz past, and he has to put his head between his knees, overwhelmed. He feels as if he will be sick.

Her hand on his shoulder. Her face when he turns to her, reassuring. He takes a shaking breath and straightens up, but he doesn’t look out the window.

She talks to him, tells him things. This language is different but not so much - he’s been studying it while he’s been without his body, and he is pleased to find his tongue can wrap around it rather easily. Disbelieving, she laughs, the first couple of times he corrects her, but then she welcomes it, starts to ask him what’s true and what’s false. Alexander tells her happily, at length.

*

“Just pretend you’re dead,” she says. His hand is in hers, and she is very still.

**_THE GREAT ALEXANDER HAMILTON_ **  
_**REMARKABLY PRESERVED**_

“Well,” he says. “I’ve had enough practice."

*

It’s hard to sleep. There’s a constant murmur, people clearly attempting to be quiet - for what, he doesn’t know, since they’re supposed to think him dead - but not managing, in their excitement. He supposes it is a show of respect, as one would never yell or run about in a graveyard. But they’re loud, and there’s flashes of light - cameras, Eliza had told him, and then spent about an hour explaining what that was. And anyway, Alexander doesn’t trust himself to sleep. He is paranoid that he’ll turn or shuffle in his rest, give the game away.

He doesn’t quite understand why it must be a secret, his resurrection. At night, Eliza unlocks the case, and he hops down from the display and they wander, and she catches him up, tells him of a new decade every evening. Eventually she tells him current events, current politics. He is excited by that news, his passion stirring, and they find that when he gets too fidgety his wound opens anew, and it doesn’t hurt but he can feel the trickle of blood on his thigh, thick. Neither of them are sure of his longevity, his resilience, in this newfound state of reexistence, and he can tell how she frets for him when she lays him out on her desk and redresses the bullet hole. Her fingers are deft and practiced, light on his skin. He shivers.

He learns, and learns, and learns, and just like before, ambition boils in him, the need to accomplish. His first arguments with Eliza, his fits of defiance, are inspired by foreign policy - he insists that if he only knew who to write, he could sway important minds. She staunchly refuses. When he looks at her she looks exhausted, and he realizes how little either of them has been sleeping. He wraps her in his arms, their first embrace since he woke back up, and pets her hair. He doesn’t apologize, not verbally.

His apologies have always meant so little.

*

He’s restless. He’s never been content but this is new and singular, itches at his skin like spider legs. He fidgets without thinking, and then figures that if he’s going to fidget he may as well end the charade. The case isn’t locked - Eliza stopped locking it long ago. There’s no need - few people have ever ducked beneath the red rope.

People are screaming, children thrown under exhibit tables for protection as he makes his way through the crowd. No one tries to stop him, probably under the impression that he is some kind of otherworldly force. Little do they know that he’s still bound here, just as he’s always been.

He knows the way to Eliza’s office by heart, but fire alarms are ringing by the time he gets there. He throws open the door to find her hurriedly stuffing important papers in her bag to save them before she is forced to leave, but when she sees him, her face softens. She throws the bag on the floor and lets him kiss her, wrapped around her while his ears ring.

*

She still doesn’t sleep. Alexander knows because he lies next to her at night now. He doesn’t sleep either, she’ll point out, but he doesn’t need it. He has already slept more than he’d ever cared to.

*

She goes to work, researches other things, things that aren’t him. Everything there is to say about his first life has already been said; he endeavors to make the second one as noteworthy. He doesn’t run for office, because his body is weak; as it turns out, the City’s new air is hard on his worn lungs, and he sometimes struggles on their nightly walk. Her neighbors wave at him as if he belongs there and he smiles meekly.

Eventually, though, he’s stronger than she is. The years have passed faster and faster, and he’s passed her by. They still go out daily around the neighborhood, but now he wheels her along. “Fresh air,” she’ll say, turning her face to the sky.

He doesn’t want to tell her he’s suffocating.

*

It feels like Eliza deserves a soldier’s funeral. A flag laid upon her coffin, a chorus of voices singing her praise. He imagines it during the ceremony.

Some of the older children from the orphanage she’d funded are there. He kneels down in front of them, plays a game with them while Eliza’s sisters are too distracted to corral them. People barely notice him anymore, and it’s just as well; he prefers to move about the world without attention paid for something as inconsequential. There is the knowledge, the general idea of Alexander Hamilton, risen from the dead, and if he had any desire to branch out, to move about where he’s not familiar, he supposes he’d not be left alone. But those in his circle treat him as flawed, as he ever was. He is grateful for it.

He stays at the cemetery long after everyone but Angelica has left, stands in the cold rain and presses two fingers to his lips and then to Eliza’s gravestone. He wishes her peace, tells her how he hopes she never has to come back, as much as he misses her.

He builds another new life.


End file.
